1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a speech recognition apparatus and method, and more particularly to an apparatus and method for reporting failure reasons to a user when speech recognition failures occur.
2. Description of the Related Art
Speech recognition technology is an element requisite for man-machine communication in next-generation technology areas, such as home networking, robotics, ubiquitous networking, etc., and is now suffering from restrictions on its performance, depending on an environment in which it is used. In reality, a mismatch between a development environment and an actual use environment of a speech recognition apparatus causes channel noise and ambient environmental noise, which makes it very difficult to commercialize speech recognition technology. Further, a recognition performance of a speech recognition apparatus is greatly affected by a pronunciation or speech habit of a speaker who uses a speech recognizer.
In general, a speech recognition apparatus, such as a speech-based user interface or a speech recognizer, requires an appropriate speech input for feature extraction or pattern matching that may be used in speech recognition. However, because of environmental factors, normal interaction often cannot obtain information as much as required in elemental technology. For example, when a user speaks too slow or fast or too loudly or quietly, when a user's speech is not recognized due to excessive noise, when a speech signal is cut off due to packet loss during speech signal transmission in a wireless communication system, and so forth, it is difficult for speech recognition to succeed. Presently, there is no way to overcome speech recognition failures due to environmental factors or an incorrect speech input itself.
As mentioned above, in conventional speech recognition, it is impossible to algorithmically cope with speech recognition failures when they are caused by environmental factors or an incorrect speech input itself.